Sholem Aleichem - The Letters of Menakhem-Mendl and Sheyne-Sheyndl and Motl, the Cantor's Son

Your husband,

Menakhem-Mendl

P.S. Regarding my nights in Boiberik, I’ve already explained that Yehupetz is off limits without a residence card. As soon as I balance my portfoliage, I’ll see about getting one and becoming a Yehupetzer. Meanwhile it’s best to lay low, for which there’s no better place than Boiberik. It’s full of dachas. The Jews who live in them commute to Yehupetz and so do I. Is everything clear now?

Yours etc.

To my dear, learned, & illustrious husband Menakhem-Mendl, may your light shine!

First, we’re all well, thank God. I hope to hear no worse from you.

Second, we’ve had good and bad luck. Our Moyshe-Hirshele swallowed a kopeck! It was a Friday and I had just returned from the market with a Sabbath fish, a nice, fresh one, still flopping. I step into the house — the boy is crying his head off. He didn’t even stop when I gave him a good smack and then another. Well, I began to scream myself: “You brainless little brat! What’s the matter? You should only have my troubles! Here, here’s a kopeck to play with. I wish it were a bellyache!” It got me down so I hardly could speak.

A few minutes later I remember the kopeck. “Moyshe-Hirshele,” I say, “where’s the kopeck?” “Topet go ’way,” he says, pointing at his mouth. Oh my God, I think: don’t tell me he’s swallowed it! I look in his mouth — it’s not there. I thought I would die. “Moyshe-Hershenyu! My darling! I’d give my life for you! What have you done with that kopeck?” I rocked him, I spanked him, I pinched him black-and-blue, but all he does is keep crying: “Go ’way!” To make a long story short, I took him to the doctor. The doctor told me to feed him potatoes. For two straight days I fed that poor child nothing but potatoes, potatoes, and more potatoes, without even a drop of milk or water. I didn’t think he’d pull through. And then on the third day I pick up a pillow while cleaning and what do you think I find? The kopeck! Those doctors wouldn’t know beans if they saw them.

But after the last straw, there’s always more, as my mother says. Here I am, up to my ears with his lordship’s children, with the doctors, with haunts and hobgoblins in my own home, and Mr. Goldfingers couldn’t care less. He’s off to Odessa, to Yehupetz, to Boiberik! How is that? He’s made a great discovery: stockings & bands! Transports! Portfolderols! He only has to shut and open his eyes and he’s a millionaire! The worst illness, says my mother, is gullibillness. You’re a fool to think your big words impress me. Shares, shmares! I’d rather own a rotten egg. No one ever made money by counting on his fingers. You know what my mother says: invest a fever and you’ll earn consumption. Mark my words, Mendl, all your overnight Yehupetz tycoons will soon by the grace of God be the same beggars they were before. I have as much faith in your Transports and your Shmaltzevs as I had in your Lumdums. Why, I’d sooner believe in black magic than in your portfolderols. I tell you, if a mad dog ate my heart it would go crazy! When I think there are wives in this world who are listened to by their husbands and will know the reason why if they aren’t while I have to treat his lordship with kid gloves because God forbid he should hear a cross word from me! How I’d love once and for all to give you a piece of my mind instead of pretending to smile! “A pinch in the cheek,” my mother says, “makes it rosy.” But what’s a poor woman to do? Burn quietly like a candle, I suppose. Or else be consumed by bad corpsicles. The worst enemies of the Jews should have them in my place! Or better yet, your Yehupetz hot shots. I am, from the bottom of my heart,

Your truly faithful wife,

Sheyne-Sheyndl.

Mum’s the word but your uncle Menashe’s son Berl is in hot water again. A week ago his house burned down and left him penniless, and now his enemies have ratted that it was insured at three times its value. It looks like he lit the match himself. He was even called in for questioning. But Berl’s no fool; he went and found witnesses to swear he was somewhere else that night. That’s why he was arrested. His wife Zlatke had such a scare that she gave birth in her seventh month. Congratulations, the baby is doing well!

To my wise, esteemed, & virtuous wife Sheyne-Sheyndl, may you live a long life!

Firstly, rest assured that I am, praise God, in the best of health. God grant that we hear from each other only good and pleasing news, amen.

Secondly, I’m soon off to Warsaw. I suppose you’ll ask why, when I’m investing in Petersburg stocks, I need to go to Warsaw. But don’t you fret. Warsaw is not a bad place. And does it have stocks & bonds! It’s an investors’ paradise, Warsaw is, not at all like Petersburg. 100-ruble notes are scrap paper there. Why, just this week Liliputs jumped in Warsaw from 1,200 to 2,000! I ask you: can a man twiddle his thumbs in Yehupetz at such a time? Or take Roads & Rails. A week ago it closed at 3 or 4 hundred and what do you think it’s worth now? Five times as much! No one even asks for a stock certificate. It’s a perfect crime, in my opinion, not to buy Roads & Rails in Warsaw while you can. Everything is on margin. You put down a few hundred smackers and pay the rest on the first of the month. (I mean the Christian month — they have them too.) And when the first arrives you have the option of taking your shares or not. But who lets you wait that long? Among God’s creatures are speculators who stop you in the street and ask: “Maybe you have some Liliputs for me? How about Roads & Rails?” They make you think it’s God’s gift to find a buyer. Just yesterday two fellows from Odessa got hold of me and wouldn’t take no for an answer. They thought they had come across a sucker. “Brothers,” I said, “I’m all out. I should have as much on my conscience as I have Liliputs or Roads & Rails.” They kept at it until I had parted with my last 5 shares of each. Don’t think they got the best of me, though, because right away I bought those shares back from them at a slight mark-up. Lately, knock wood, whatever I’ve bought has gone up. They all say I have a gift for it. Let the first of the month come around and I’ll pay off my portfoliage. Then I’ll switch to another brokerage. The one I work in now has too many Jews for comfort. There’s a new scene there every week. The last time it even came to blows. But because I’m in a hurry, I’ll be brief. God willing, I’ll write more in my next letter. Meanwhile, may He grant you health and success. My fondest regards to everyone,

Your husband,

Menakhem-Mendl

P.S. I can easily believe what you write about Berl. It’s the only way for a Kasrilevke merchant to survive. Mind you, such things don’t happen in Yehupetz. In the first place, we’re all doing well. And secondly, if a fire breaks out here, God forbid, we have ways to deal with it. Before it can spread a battalion in brass helmets rushes up and sprays it with a rubber gut. A Yehupetz fire is a sight for sore eyes!

Yours, etc.

To my dear, learned, & illustrious husband Menakhem-Mendl, may your light shine!

First, we’re all well, thank God. I hope to hear no worse from you.

Second, my dear husband, I pronounce you a certified lunatic. You might as well run naked through the streets! As if it weren’t enough for Odessa, Yehupetz, and Boiberik to know that M.M. stands for Market Maniac, you have to let Warsaw in on it too. First it was Lumdums and now it’s stockings, Pottyboils, Lilyfoots, portfolderols, Rack & Ruin! For a box on the ear you have to go all the way to Warsaw? God in heaven, find me the wizard who can box the nonsense out of you! You who happen to have, should she still be alive when you read this, a wife who is up all day and all night with your children, because if it isn’t one thing, it’s another. Just yesterday one of them was almost burned to death by a colander of boiling water that barely missed it. There’s good luck even in bad, my mother says — but what does that have to do with his lordship? He’s too busy attending fires. He thinks Yehupetz is burning down just for him. It should burn and take Warsaw and Petersburg with it! I can’t walk the streets without good, God-fearing folk washing their hands in my blood. They point and say, “There goes the Yehupetzer’s Missus,” and I could crawl into a hole in the ground…. My mother, bless her, wasn’t joking when she said: “Never let a husband off the leash. Not even a carpenter knows where the chips will fly.” She never doubted, she says, that my marriage would come to no good end. I should have married for money, she says. If I was going to marry a swine, I should have married a rich one. “I’d sooner send your husband a ten-foot tapeworm,” she says, “than another letter!” She says a cane can accomplish more than a wink. I should bring you home on a broomstick, she says. No, on an oven poker!